Investigation: How Do My Assessment and Grading Strategies Affect My Students' Grades?
Introduction
Approaches to assessment and grading keep teachers up at night. You may be wondering how you should approach grading and assessment to increase your students’ motivation and willingness to try in your courses.
How do specific approaches to assessment and grading affect students' grades?
Instructions
Teachers are often heard lamenting (or boasting) about the number of students who fail their courses. These conversations beg the question: How do specific approaches to assessment and grading affect students' grades and what they learn?
You can investigate this question by using a model to predict the grades that will result from our grading policies. The purpose of this investigation give you a chance to consider how your own grading practices might enhance your teaching.
Instructions
1. Work in the pairs assigned in class. Discuss the following questions with your partner record your answers:
Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Group 4
Group 5
Emily
Morris
Melissa
Jess
NA
Joh
Shara
Erin
Jamie
NA
Talia
a. To what extent do teachers "control" students' grades?
b. What are some ways the grading systems can affect students?
c. What grade do you envision most of your students receiving in your class?
Data Collection and Analysis
2. Use your laptop to access the Gradebook Simulator and configure a simulated gradebook.
After viewing the demonstration of how to use the program, configure and activate a collection of assignments that you feel might represent the types and frequencies of assignments in the unit you are teaching.
If you are using weighted grades, configure the assignment categories and the corresponding weights.
3. Work with your partner to use your models to investigate some questions about grading. Some questions that you could investigate include:
Should I use weighted grades? Compare the final grades resulting from weighting grades and counting straight points. What difference, if any, did weighting make? Why? Review our journal entries from last week. How do our CTs address some of these issues?
What types of assignments should I include in a unit? Experiment with different approaches that allow you to assign challenging tasks and have as many students as possible make acceptable grades. What strategies did you come up with?
Is my grading system fair? Given the participation of your students, do you feel that the class's grades as a whole were fair? How would you use these grades to explain to child's parents their performance? Note especially your highest and lowest scoring students. Does your system allow students to determine how they achieve during a marking period and avoid being blindsided?
Am I just reinforcing the Game of School? What values influence how you teach, assess, and grade? How does your grading system communicate these values to your students? Where in these grades are your values expressed. What features delineate your approach from what Fried calls the "Game of School?"
How does grading relate to student learning? How does your grading system contribute to or detract from student learning?
Conclusions and Next Steps
4. Based on your investigations, work with your partner to write a scientific explanation that makes a claim addressing the assertion above.
5. Describe one feature of YOUR grading strategy that takes into account your students' characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses. Explain how this feature is supposed to help your students learn.
5. Given the results of your investigation and your previous efforts to understand your students, what questions about grading and assessment come to mind that you feel might merit further investigation?
Investigation: How Do My Assessment and Grading Strategies Affect My Students' Grades?
Introduction
Approaches to assessment and grading keep teachers up at night. You may be wondering how you should approach grading and assessment to increase your students’ motivation and willingness to try in your courses.How do specific approaches to assessment and grading affect students' grades?
Instructions
Teachers are often heard lamenting (or boasting) about the number of students who fail their courses. These conversations beg the question: How do specific approaches to assessment and grading affect students' grades and what they learn?You can investigate this question by using a model to predict the grades that will result from our grading policies. The purpose of this investigation give you a chance to consider how your own grading practices might enhance your teaching.
Instructions
1. Work in the pairs assigned in class. Discuss the following questions with your partner record your answers:
Data Collection and Analysis
2. Use your laptop to access the Gradebook Simulator and configure a simulated gradebook.
3. Work with your partner to use your models to investigate some questions about grading. Some questions that you could investigate include:
Conclusions and Next Steps
4. Based on your investigations, work with your partner to write a scientific explanation that makes a claim addressing the assertion above.
5. Describe one feature of YOUR grading strategy that takes into account your students' characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses. Explain how this feature is supposed to help your students learn.
5. Given the results of your investigation and your previous efforts to understand your students, what questions about grading and assessment come to mind that you feel might merit further investigation?